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Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

On Thanksgiving, when we went around the table and said what we were thankful for, (yes, we are that obnoxious) I said “Our little house, and how much work we’ve done on it this year”. I was thinking of our beautiful garden, our new windows, my big new shower, two new bedrooms…. but I was not talking about our kitchen. No, the kitchen is by far my least favorite part of our house, what with the torn and stained linoleum floors, cramped counter space, and (oh, oh dear) half the cabinets missing (necessary to install a new range, microwave and much-larger refrigerator). Renovating the kitchen is scheduled for next summer, between the siding/decks, and laying new hardwood through the upstairs, which is wonderful.. but also leaves me with crazy open shelves for another 9 months. I try not to complain about it, since I know Tom is working his a** off as it is, but… guys. Look at it.

I’ve done my best at keeping everything on the shelves (plastic dollar store shoe boxes, yay?), but the visual clutter drove me insane.

Last night while doing dishes I gasped and yelled to Tom “I AM AN IDIOT”, because the answer was right in front of me. Literally.

Pretty dishes on the open shelves, ugly food stuffs in the cabinets. It only took me a year to figure that one out. The fridge side of the kitchen still looks cluttered, but it is organized and more things are out of the way.

And because my teething baby would not nap unless I was holding her today, behold: what my kitchen will look like once the current living room becomes a dining room, and the table is out of the way:

Well, not quite, since we’re not using Ikea cabinets, and I did not measure anything (see: sleeping baby in my arms), but Oh! Cabinets! O love thee!

Kitchen idea board:

Oh, it’s hard to be patient.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

It’s 11pm, the computer is off, and I just realized I forgot to post today. I’m not sure if Nablopomo has improved my blog, but honesty I’ve enjoyed it. Something about recording the mundane, even when it is a murky phone picture of embroidery at nearly-midnight, makes me happy. A friend recently asked me for my thoughts on blogging, privacy, advertising and branding… and honestly I’m at a loss. I have a blog, but i’m not sure I qualify as a capital-B Blogger. Heck, i’m barely a capital-A Adult, since I wrote all of this while eating pie for dinner, and watching DVR’ed episodes of 30 Rock.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

That, on our third child, I’ve relaxed enough to say “Yeah, sure, give her a bite of whipped cream”.

Even better? Knowing it was coming, so I gave her whipped cream the night before, and enjoyed it almost as much as she did. Being the good cop sometimes is fun.

Babies of the family have all the fun y’all.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

I heard this discussion about the new definition of family on NPR yesterday, and it’s been on my mind all day.

My own family has been a fluid creature since birth. My parents were never married, but they were together 15 years. My dad wasn’t around full time before I was 7 because he was working all over the world, and then after my parents divorce (despite never having a wedding), we were a family with a single mother and three children; a single father with two children; a mother, step father and three children; a single father with three children. At 15 I moved out, and lived off and on with friends; with my sister and her husband and boys; with a boyfriend in college; a best friend; Thomas, and our girls. This is the first year post-divorce for Thomas’s family, though in fact his own parents divorced in his toddlerhood, and the man who is our daily support, Mike, is his stepfather. Or not-stepfather. We’re not sure any more, but he is “Papa” to the girls, and without a doubt our family. I talked to my dad today, and my 7 year old half-sister Tillie. Tom called his grandmother, who was married for 50+ years to his grandfather, who passed away last year.

My point is that this thing, family, is a hard thing to pin down. And as cheesy as it is to say, Laurie Berkner probably said it best: If you’re in my heart, you’re in my family.

Happy thanksgiving y’all. I hope your table was surrounded by family.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

Coming upon my girls, and feeling every cell in my body sing that this is where I should be. This is why I am alive.

I won’t lie – sometimes parenting three little girls under five overwhelms me. I am classically INFP on the Meyers Briggs personality scale, and have a hard time juggling three such intense little people. I am physically and emotionally spent at the end of every single day, and when the nights are long and wakeful, and I do not feel like I have a single moment to recharge creatively… I start to lose it. I yell, I send kids to their room for small slights, I feed them cereal for three meals and hide in the bathroom (the only door with a lock in our house) while they eat. It isn’t the practicalities that overwhelm me – I can get them dressed, feed them, get them out of the house, manage them at restaurants, handle the inevitable public meltdowns, and get them home again safely. It isn’t having a lack of hands or skills that overwhelms me, it is the constant, unyielding need that I must fill. For someone who recharges by quiet, creative time, the chaos of juggling three (four when you consider I still have a marriage to maintain) people’s needs zaps me of every bit of momentum I have. There are days when I am dead in the water, and rapidly sinking.

Tom has a hard time understanding this, since in my “previous life” I was a very social person, happily working in an office, multitasking responsibilities and staff, involved in plays and activist groups, AND going to school full time. How three tiny people can be more exhausting than all of that is just foreign to him, and honestly it’s something I’ve struggled with. When I define myself, it isn’t someone who calls her husband when he is ten minutes late getting home because she is going to explode. It’s hard to feel like a confident, capable adult when I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to turn on Sesame Street at 8am.

This motherhood gig is draining in a way a job and social life never was, because every cell of my being is invested in getting this right. If I missed a deadline at work, I could make it up, or accept the consequences. When I let a friend down, I felt horrible, but I knew they were not scared for life. Giving myself this kind of permission as a mother is impossible.

And yet.

There is nothing, nothing in the world I would rather be doing.

So, every night I pray for another chance tomorrow to get it right. To have the patience, the courage, the wisdom to lead these little people. I pray that these moments of joy can sustain me, and that my children know that behind every frazzled moment, every request for “just a minute”, there is a mother who just wants to be better for them. Who is learning how to do this, right along side them.

Also, a mother who probably should go read that description of INFP personality again, because hello, unrealistic standards and perfectionism much? For the record, I only asked my kids to be quiet 17 times while I wrote this, and they’ve only been shut in their room for 6 of the 20 minutes it took me to write this. And hey, a post before 10pm, go me.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

Couldn’t post yesterday; brain frozen. *And no, that isn’t Becky, relax.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

We woke up to our first snow of the season Thursday, and the girls could not contain their excitement. In the half hour it took me to wake up enough to pull their snow boots out of the basement, Ella drew the snow woman she planned to make, and Alice perched on the top of the couch, watching the flakes fall.

We played outside just long enough to throw a few snowballs and introduce Becky to snow. She was not impressed. We had a meeting to get to, so I promised the girls we would make a snowman afterwards if they would just get into the stroller. Of course, by the time we got home a few hours later the snow had melted, and I was deemed a dirty rotten liar.

So, the girls were thrilled today, since it snowed all day. I keep looking outside and asking “Isn’t it November? Did I miss a month?”

This is the view outside right now. The roads are slick, and of course we have not gotten our snow tires on, because this was last November 21st. More snow is in the forecast this week, with zero chance of it warming up enough for a significant melt.

DO NOT WANT.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

Our community has recently embraced the Waldorf philosophy of child education, and a local waldorf-inspired preschool held a lantern walk around the duck pond to celebrate St. Martin, and the season. A good friend of mine is teaching part time at the school, so we intended to come and join in the celebration, but late naps  and a cranky baby derailed our plans. Since we had already decorated our lanterns, we decide to have a walk around our neighborhood after dinner.

My girls lasted about 10 minutes in full snow suits before their fingers and noses were frozen (I blame their father, who is the love of my life, but cold blooded like a lizard), so maybe it was for the best that we did not venture out with the crowd.

My camera, a cheap point and shoot Kodak we bought on our honeymoon after I dropped our nice camera 20 ft off a railing, is not a great night time camera but we thought the bright full moon was lovely on the longest exposure setting. This was an accidental jiggle of the camera, but oh so telling. My life is such a happy, happy accident. I could not have planned it any better.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

Some friends and I have been talking a lot recently about Christmas, gifts, and what we plan to give to our children. I go back and forth about the subject – on one hand, I love to shop, to give, and to watch my children unwrap the very gifts they asked for. On the other, I have a very small house, and a even smaller budget. There are wonderful articles and blog posts about the subject, but I add this:

A pillowcase my mother made for me when I was 10 years old.  Our mother made us one each year – sometimes our names, sometimes an elaborate landscape, sometimes a simple scene. Most were worn out after a full year of use, so when when my sister found this mixed up in her things and returned it to me this summer, it felt like a physical reminder that my mother thought of me with each stitch, each knot, each twisted thread. My mother could not afford to buy us armloads of gifts, but each night we went to sleep and dreamed on a pillowcase she had stitched with what she had – time, and patience and joy. (You’ll notice the signature in the right hand corner is sloppy, compared to the tight, even stitches above. That is because my mom did not sign it, so 10 year old Ivory stitched it, after working on this masterpiece.)

I’ll give you two guesses what my girls are getting in their stockings this year. If you need both guesses, I hope you said chocolate the first time.

Originally published at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. Please leave any comments there.

*Actually it is NMN, according to my birth certificate (No Middle Name, nice job state of Oklahoma, people never get it). I chose Mae as a kid, but never legally changed it, though I did take my maiden name as my middle name when I got married. So, yeah, mundane.